I didn't get the Robot Phone until I used it, now I'm a believer

If you’re a PhoneArena regular, you’ve probably heard of the Honor Robot Phone.

This product has been making the headlines recently, and for a good reason: it features a robotized gimbal that can unfold from the body of the phone to prop up its main camera – essentially allowing it the freedom to look in any direction and record photos and video in ways that simply aren’t possible with a normal phone.

Look, Honor’s Robot Phone is a crazy concept, that much is certain. Some have struggled to see the point of this product, while others have ignored it simply due to it being so different from everything else out there.
But I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Honor Robot Phone last week, and I seized that opportunity like a toddler seizes a tablet.

And what can I say – I walked away from that session thinking about all the amazing content creation opportunities this phone enables.

Is it a robot? Is it a camera? It's a robot camera!

For starters, the Robot Phone is all about the gimbal camera. It’s a content creation machine, first and foremost. The ingenious mechanism allows you to use the powerful main camera for rear or front shots. More importantly, it enables incredible stabilization and allows you to shoot from all sorts of cinematic angles.

I have a real, full-sized phone gimbal, the Zhiyun Smooth Q2, and I’ve never really found that thing intuitive. It’s just too much hassle for a person who isn’t really a camera buff. Add the fact that you need to carry it with you (and it’s not the smallest device), make sure it’s charged, and learn to handle it properly, and I think it’s not a surprise that I haven’t used it more than a couple of times. Really, a bad purchase on my part.
The Robot Phone’s built-in, miniature gimbal? I don’t know, I just felt it’s so much more intuitive. The moment I got ahold of the phone and opened the camera app, I got straight to experimenting with the different following modes and special moves you can pull off with the gimbal.

It has all the features and modes you can expect from a normal gimbal (pan follow, FPV, etc.) but the iconography and the on-screen buttons make everything seem easier and more approachable.

Before I knew it, I was taking advanced selfies and shooting slow, smooth camera pans, the kind of which you can never pull off with a normal phone. The Robot Phone’s camera interface even has a virtual joystick to recreate the joystick functionality of standard gimbals. And you can adjust the joystick's sensitivity so you can get perfectly paced movements.There’s really a lot that’s been developed in terms of camera functionality to support the gimbal mechanism properly. You really feel that it unlocks plenty of possibilities for content creation. It’s such a powerful tool.

Who is the Robot Phone for, and how much does it cost?

Granted, it’s not for everyone. This is an expensive phone that features a lot of mechanical components. You can’t expect it to be as durable as a Moto G. The Honor Robot Phone, which is a China exclusive, is sold at the local equivalent of $1500, for the base configuration of 256 GB.

It’s by no means cheap, but this is to be expected given all the unique hardware and functionality that it offers. But if you look at the Robot Phone as a specialty piece of hardware for modern content creators – people who want to keep recording footage with their phone, but maybe take the production values to the next level, then it really starts to make sense.
I’m fully confident that, in the right hands, the Robot Phone can produce spectacular footage that rivals what can be achieved with the best prosumer cameras out there.

Yes, there’s a cute AI assistant in it, and yes, it can use the gimbal and camera module to animate itself and act like your tiny robot friend. But that stuff is secondary to the Robot Phone’s real nature, which is to be a content creation machine.

Now that I had the chance to play around with it – the Robot Phone absolutely makes sense, and we can only wish it could come overseas as well. Alas, it’s bound to remain a China exclusive for now, but hey – maybe by the time we get Robot Phone 2, both the concept and Honor’s ability to distribute and support that crazy piece of tech will be advanced enough that it’d be possible to launch it globally? We’ll see, we’ll see. What do you think about the Robot Phone? Share your opinion in the comments!

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